Social Psychological and Structural Influences on Vegetarian Beliefs

Abstract This study examines the link between social structural variables (gender, race, education, age, rural childhood), individual social psychology (altruism, self-interest, traditionality, and openness to change), and beliefs about the benefits of vegetarianism (for health, the environment, animals, and world hunger) and self-reported vegetarianism. Data from a random sample of 420 adult U.S. residents showed that 5.2 percent considered themselves vegetarian. The strongest predictor of vegetarianism as a dietary choice was the belief that vegetarianism is beneficial to the environment. None of the social structural variables had a direct influence on vegetarianism as a dietary choice. Of the four values studied, only altruism and traditional values influenced beliefs about the benefits of vegetarianism. Altruistic values increased, and traditional values decreased, beliefs that vegetarianism is beneficial to health, the environment, farm animals, and world hunger. Blacks were more likely than Whites to adhere to the beliefs that vegetarianism helps prevent cruelty to farm animals, is beneficial to personal health, and is beneficial to the environment. The race differences in beliefs persisted even with controls for values.     

Media Diet Homogeneity in a Fragmented Media Landscape

This study assesses the nature of selective exposure and avoidance behaviors among political liberals and conservatives using a survey of 351 American citizens obtained through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Analyses of a new “homogeneity of media diet” measure suggest that although liberals and conservatives consume a comparable total number of media sources, the homogeneity of those media sources is higher among liberals than it is among conservatives. In the sample examined here, liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to selectively attend to ideologically onsonant media sources and were significantly more likely than conservatives to selectively avoid ideologically discrepant media sources. Analyses include a validity test of the self-reported selective exposure used by Pew and others, as well as an examination of partisan perceptions of the ideological leanings of various media sources. Results indicate that conservatives are more likely than liberals to rate neutral media sources (e.g., CNN, USA Today, and network news broadcasts) as ideologically biased. Meanwhile, liberals are more likely than conservatives to perceive the bias in their ideologically consonant media sources. Implications for future studies of selective exposure and avoidance—and democratic theory in general—are discussed.     

Social Status and Attitudes toward Organizational Control of Genetic Data

Abstract

Advances in genetics testing technologies have lead to concerns over the use of genetic testing in non-medical, organizational settings. Genetic testing, which is becoming an increasingly common practice in organizations to screen employees and applicants for employment and insurance for genetic anomalies, has been demonstrated to be consistent with organizational goals such as profitablity and efficiency. This paper examines the characteristics of those who support organizational genetic screening. Data from a randomly selected sample of adults reveal that three indicators of socio-economic status — income, education and supervising others — were negatively associated with support for the non-medical use of genetic data. These findings suggest that working class individuals are more likely to conform to organizational policies requiring genetic testing of employees and clients. The study argues that managerial decisions based on genetic data may have the most impact on individuals with the fewest socio-economic resources.     

Matching,marriage, and children: differences across sexual orientations

There are many differences in behavior across couples of different sexual orientations—some well known, others not. We propose a model which explains differences in expected matching behavior, marriage rates, non-child-friendly activities, and fertility, based on different costs of procreation and complementarities between marriage and children. The model predicts that the biological traits of same-sex couples, unlike those of heterosexual couples, should not be correlated—holding constant other household production characteristics. In addition, the model predicts that heterosexuals have a higher probability of having children and getting married, and that childless heterosexuals are less likely to engage in behaviors not complementary with children than childless gays and lesbians. Using two nationally representative probability samples that self-identify sexual orientation, these predictions are confirmed.     

Lay actions in the face of crisis—Swedish citizens’ actions in response to the global financial crisis of 2008

This study goes beyond attitudes and behavioral indications as response to risk perceptions and focuses on actual behavior of laypeople. We report the results from a survey, conducted among a sample of Swedish citizens in the spring of 2009, looking at lay actions as responses to the financial crisis of 2008.In total, 3138 respondents were asked whether they had done something to protect their money during the recent financial crisis or not. The total sample, 1053 respondents, was divided into two comparable groups and a binary logistic regression tested a model with nine factors hypothesized to be predicting the choice to act or not as a response to the financial crisis. Among the eight factors predicting likelihood to act were gender, age, education, ethnicity, possession of assets affected of the financial crisis, worrying about the everyday household finances, the perception of others’ actions, and importance put on being knowledgeable and up-dated about financial matters. The ninth factor—respondents’ perception of the crisis to be a greater threat to the U.S. and global economy than to their own personal finances—did not contribute significantly to the model.A second aim of the study was to determine whether any individuals acted rashly and, if so, whether this group differed in any statistically significant way from the group of individuals that acted in a more financially circumspectly manner. In the group of individuals that acted rashly there is a higher propensity of: individuals who do not think they have assets affected by the crisis: individuals who have a lower level of education; and individuals who consider it important to be knowledgeable and up-to-date about financial matters. It should be of interest to policymakers and researchers to further explore features of this group of laypeople because it is the most important target group for consumer information and protection.     

La migration interprovinciale chez les immigrants musulmans : La francophonie comme vecteur d'intégration?

In Canada, immigrants are more likely to migrate within the country—interprovincial migration, for example—than Canadian-born individuals. This is particularly true of Muslim immigrants. In this article, we seek to identify the characteristics that determine the second migrations undertaken by these immigrants. To do so, we have focused on (1) the socio-demographic characteristics specific to this community (language in particular) and (2) the socio-political context of the various provinces welcoming these immigrants. The results lead us to relativize the hypothesis of a tension between living in a French-speaking environment with a tense socio-political context for the Muslim community, and an English-speaking environment where the socio-political issues specific to this community are less present. Beyond strictly economic considerations, Muslim immigrants must also negotiate their integration by taking into account the language and the environment where certain socio-political issues concerning them are more or less debated and/or where their official language of choice is not spoken.     

Violent behavior: a measure of emotional upset?

Over the past ten years, sociologists have broadened their view of what counts as an appropriate measure of mental health. This reflects a growing recognition that individuals express emotional upset in various ways. For example, some individuals are more likely to become depressed in response to stress while others are more likely to drink heavily. Contemporary studies often include measures of "internalizing" (i.e., more feeling-based measures) and "externalizing" (i.e., more behavioral measures) styles of psychopathology, especially when studying group differences in mental health. Alcohol abuse is the classic measure of externalized distress in sociological research. In this paper, we present a theoretical argument and supporting empirical evidence to argue that violent behavior should be included as a measure of externalized distress in response to stress. Our study suggests that violent behavior is a more likely response to stress among individuals with particular coping and appraisal tendencies. Specifically, violent behavior may be a more likely response to stress among individuals who tend to appraise situations as threatening while also repressing any emotional response to stress. We contend that, since some groups may be more likely than others to respond to stress with violence, it is particularly important to include measures of violent behavior when studying group difference in distress.     

Gender,rank, and social networks on an enterprise social media platform

In this paper, we harness server-side data—540,000 messages generated by 2085 users on TamTamy, an Enterprise Social Media (ESM) platform—to examine how gender and rank shaped “homophily” (the tendency to connect with similar others) and centrality in an ESM network. Drawing on the logic of “distinctiveness theory,” which argues that the numeric rarity of a category in a given setting promotes the use of that category as a basis for connecting with others, we hypothesized and found: (a) the tendency to connect with same-gender others was stronger among women than among men; (b) the tendency to connect with same-rank others was stronger among high-ranking employees than among low-ranking employees; (c) for high-ranking men, rank was more important than gender as a basis for connecting with others; and (d) for low-ranking women, gender was more important than rank as a basis for connecting with others. We also found that whereas higher ranking individuals were more likely to be in central (bridging) positions in the overall network, gender was unrelated to network centrality. Our study suggests that the affordances of ESM for open and distributed communications notwithstanding, the social networks that emerge on ESM platforms may reinforce social stratification on some dimensions while diminishing it on others.     

Visible Minorities and Majority Giving

We examine if the presence of minority individuals in the community affects the decision to give to charities by majority individuals. We focus on two giving decisions by the majority population. The first is giving to any charitable organization; the second is giving to organizations geared to international causes. We also examine these two decisions when the sample is split into religious and non-religious individuals. We find that the larger the proportion of minorities in a given community, the less likely that members of the majority group give to charity in general—supporting the idea that heterogeneous communities deter outreach—but the more likely they are to give to international causes, giving credence to Allport’s ‘contact’ hypothesis.     

I Was a Teenage Vegan: Motivation and Maintenance of Lifestyle Movements

Recent research has pointed to the rise of socially conscious consumption and of lifestyle movements or social movements that focus on changing one's everyday lifestyle choices as a form of protest. Much of this research addresses how adults maintain socially conscious consumption practices. Using interviews with youths who are vegan—strict vegetarians who exclude all animal products from their diet and lifestyle—I isolate the factors influencing recruitment into and retention of veganism as a lifestyle movement. I show that initial recruitment requires learning, reflection, and identity work, and that subsequent retention requires two factors: social support from friends and family, and cultural tools that provide the skills and motivation to maintain lifestyle activism. I also show how participation in the punk subculture further facilitated these processes. This work contributes to studies of youth subcultures and social movements by showing how the two intersect in lifestyle movement activism.     

Crusading for Moral Authority: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Science

Numerous studies show biblicist Christianity, religiosity, and conservative political identity are strong predictors of Americans holding skeptical attitudes toward publicly controversial aspects of science, such as human evolution. We show that Christian nationalism—meaning the desire to see particularistic and exclusivist versions of Christian symbols, values, and policies enshrined as the established religion of the United States—is a strong and consistent predictor of Americans’ attitudes about science above and beyond other religious and political characteristics. Further, a majority of the overall effect of political ideology on skepticism about the moral authority of science is mediated through Christian nationalism, indicating that political conservatives are more likely to be concerned with particular aspects of science primarily because they are more likely to be Christian nationalists. Likewise, substantial proportions of the well-documented associations between religiosity and biblical “literalism” with views of science are mediated through Christian nationalism. Because Christian nationalism seeks to establish a particular and exclusivist vision of Christianity as the dominant moral order, adherents feel threatened by challenges to the epistemic authority undergirding that order, including by aspects of science perceived as challenging the supremacy of biblicist authority.     

Micro-structural foundations of network inequality: Evidence from a field experiment in professional networking

Sociological accounts of network inequality typically rely on the logic of preferential attachment, holding that individuals in a social network prefer to form ties with central rather than peripheral actors. We develop an alternative explanation for the growth of network inequality that does not require actors to have knowledge about the social position of others or to hold explicit preferences for partners based on such knowledge. Instead, we theorize that central actors benefit from being exposed to more opportunities for triadic closure, which confounds a quality- or popularity-based signal that their greater connectedness might also send. We test this prediction an observational study and a field experiment across multiple professional conferences. In the field experiment, we test whether network centrality is predictive of tie formation if the benefits that central actors receive through their disproportional exposure to second-order network neighbors are randomly suppressed. The findings demonstrate that for the same level of exposure to opportunities for triadic closure, central actors and less central actors are equally likely to be selected as network partners. We discuss how the proposed mechanism may be used to rectify social capital disadvantages among disadvantaged groups.     

Negative (But Not Positive) Parenting Interacts with Infant Negative Affect to Predict Infant Approach: Evidence of Diathesis‐Stress

Temperament by parenting interactions may reflect that individuals with greater risk are more likely to experience negative outcomes in adverse contexts (diathesis‐stress) or that these individuals are more susceptible to contextual influences in a “for better or for worse” pattern (differential susceptibility). Although such interactions have been identified for a variety of child outcomes, prior research has not examined approach characteristics—excitement and approach toward pleasurable activities—in the first year of life. Therefore, this study investigated whether 6‐month maternal reported infant negative affect—a phenotypic marker of risk/susceptibility—interacted with 8‐month observed parenting behaviors (positive parenting, negative parenting) to predict 12‐month infant behavioral approach. Based on a sample of mothers and their infants (N = 150), results indicated that negative parenting was inversely associated with subsequent approach for infants with high, but not low, levels of negative affect. Similar results did not occur regarding positive parenting. These findings better fit a diathesis‐stress model rather than a differential susceptibility model. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Jeopardy,Consciousness, and Multiple Discrimination: Intersecting Inequalities in Contemporary Western Europe

Theories of intersectionality argue that individuals with multiple minority statuses often face mistreatment that stems from multiple, interlocking systems of inequality. King (1988) refers to this phenomenon as “multiple jeopardy,” and argues that those who experience multiple jeopardy often develop a “multiple consciousness”—an awareness of multiple systems of inequality working with and through one another. This study analyzes recent survey data to assess perceived multiple jeopardy and its relationship to multiple consciousness in the context of contemporary Western Europe. Findings provide support for intersectionality, as individuals who hold multiple minority statuses are more likely than others to perceive having personally experienced multiple forms of discrimination, and are more likely to view multiple discrimination (discrimination based on multiple social statuses) as a widespread social phenomenon. Controlling for other factors, personal experiences with multiple forms of discrimination (“multiple jeopardy”) are associated with greater multiple consciousness. Personal experiences with discrimination based on a single dimension of inequality (“single jeopardy”) also facilitate multiple consciousness, however, though not to the same degree. The conclusion highlights the importance of intersectionality for future research and policy concerning discrimination.     

Care leavers as helpers: Motivations for and benefits of helping others

Much of the attention concerning youth in care focuses on the ways they are being helped and supported. This study focuses on the motivations and experiences which lead youth in care to assume a helper role, the meaning they ascribe to such a role and the benefits consequently gained. The study sample consisted of 28 Israeli and German care leavers, aged 18–26, who had begun, were about to begin or had already finished higher education. The results show various motivations for assuming a helper role e.g. socialization through early parental roles within biological families, modeling by significant others, and exposure to pro-social values and opportunities for volunteering within the care systems. The ways that these young people support others vary. Some volunteer within their communities, some support members of their family of origin, and others integrated the idea of supporting others into their career choice. According to these young people, assuming a helper role provided a strong sense of purpose in life and contributed to their self-efficacy, social connectedness and ability to cope with their adverse past. In particular, supporting others seems to reflect care leavers' wish to lead a normal life.     

Generations,Identities, and the Collective Memory of Che Guevara1

Has the image of Che Guevara lost its power to evoke radical politics in the face of pervasive commodification? The commercialization of this 1960s political icon has called into question the power of the market to shape collective memories. Meanwhile, antisystemic movements of the left continue to erect his image at protest events. In light of this contest over how Che Guevara is remembered, we investigate, using data from a survey of Spanish citizens, who is most likely to recall him. We find qualified support for the theory of generational imprinting—Che is more often recalled by those generations who saw him rise to prominence during their formative years, although prominent as a collective symbol rather than as a living person. Our results also corroborate the claim that historical figures or events are more salient for, and therefore more likely to be remembered by, some subgenerational units than others. Thus, although the younger generations are in general more likely than their elders to recall Che, he is most frequently remembered by the highly educated leftists who espouse postmaterialist and posttraditionalist values and identify more with their local regions than with the nation of Spain. These patterns suggest that, in contrast to the dire predictions of mass culture theorists, the memory of Che Guevara has become increasingly tied to markers of social, ethnic‐regional, and political identity.     

Advocacy Recruits: Demographic Predictors of Volunteering for Advocacy-Related Organizations

Empirical studies of volunteering assume that the similar individuals are drawn equally to different kinds of volunteer-using organizations. The purpose of this article is to explore the demographic predictors of volunteering for several types of advocacy-related organizations, including political parties, labor and business organizations, immigrant/refugee-serving groups, civic organizations, and environmental/animal organizations. Data from the Current Population Survey’s volunteering supplement (pooled 2006–2012) indicate that the demographic profiles of volunteers drawn to advocacy-related organizations differ in specific ways from the demographic profile of those volunteering for other types of organizations. In particular, veterans are more likely than non-veterans to volunteer for political/advocacy groups and civic organizations. Being a minority veteran is associated with volunteering for immigrant organizations and environmental/animal-related organizations. Foreign-born individuals—both US citizens and non-citizens—are more likely to volunteer for immigrant/refugee organizations than the native born. The demographic profiles of volunteers for advocacy-related organizations vary in some ways from the demographic profiles of those who volunteer for service delivery organizations.     

The Work Values of First‐Year College Students: Exploring Group Differences

A sample of 3,570 first‐year college students were surveyed regarding the factors they deemed most important to their long‐term career choice. Students as a whole identified intrinsic interest, high salary, contributions to society, and prestige as their 4 most important work values. Additional analyses found men more likely to espouse extrinsic values, women more likely to espouse social values, and students from median parental‐income groups more likely to espouse intrinsic values. In light of these results, counselors are encouraged to place a greater emphasis on the role of work values in the decision‐making process.     

Status Perceptions Matter: Understanding Disliking Among Adolescents

The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This phenomenon is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in five schools). As hypothesized, individuals dislike those who they look down on (disdain), and conform to others by disliking those who they perceive as being looked down on by their peers (conformity). The inconsistency between status perceptions also leads to disliking, when individuals do not look up to those who they perceive to be admired by peers (frustration). Adolescents are not more likely to dislike those who they look up to (admiration). The results demonstrate the role of status perceptions on disliking tie formation.